Nevernight by Jay Kristoff – Spoiler Free Review
Title: Nevernight
Author: Jay Kristoff
Series Name: The Nevernight Chronicles
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Publication Date: July 25th, 2016
Pages: 427 (Paperback)
Publishers: Harper Voyager
Rating:
Destined to destroy empires Mia Covere is only ten years old when she is given her first lesson in death.
Six years later, the child raised in the shadows takes her first steps towards keeping the promise she made on the day that she lost everything.
But the chance to strike against such powerful enemies will be fleeting, so if she is to have her revenge, Mia must become a weapon without equal. She must prove herself against the deadliest of friends and enemies, and survive the tutelage of murderers, liars and demons at the heart of a murder cult.
The Red Church is no Hogwarts, but Mia is no ordinary student. The shadows loves her. And they drink her fear.
Just something I want to say before getting into this review. Alot of people have said that this book is a YA book and I do not agree with this. Some people do say it is Adult, but most say it is YA. Considering that there is 2 very detailed sex scenes and MANY detailed death scenes as well I do not think that this is YA because of that. Yes our main character is a 17 year old but that isn’t enough to purely call this YA. Anyway moving on!
I really like the cover of this book. I don’t fully understand the bird on the cover but I get all the little illustrations within the bird that are shown. I also like that the front cover has one of the suns, the spine has another and the back has the last one. I think that is a cool idea! I also like the quote on the front that comes up in the book a few times!
The writing was pretty good, it was easy to understand majority of the time. I like that sometimes Jay talks directly to the reader through the text, it adds something interesting. But my favourite thing is the foot notes! They give extra info and some of them are really funny too haha.
One thing that annoyed and confused me at the start was that this book swaps back and forth from the past and the present. The present is in normal text and the past in italics, so you can tell the difference. So that it swaps back and forward annoyed me but at first I didn’t know what was going on because there is nothing to say ‘this is the past!!’ and at first I thought we were following two different people and it took a chapter or two for some in the book to acknowledge that both sections were from the point of view of Mia.
I enjoyed this plot but it wasn’t amazing. I liked the idea and the world but it didn’t wow me. Thats the main reason I didn’t give it a higher rating. I don’t know why exactly I didn’t love it, I just didn’t. So I honestly don’t have that much to say about it.
Mia was an enjoyable character and I liked her personality and her choices throughout the book. Tric was a interesting character and I liked learning about his past. Ash, I liked at the start but….. Moving on from her so I don’t spoil anything. Carlotta was an interesting character too and I enjoyed her. Hush I was iffy with from the start and I kinda suspected something from the start but it turns out I was wrong about that one! Jess I disliked from the start, I like that right at the end she put aside her hate to help everyone, but besides that I didn’t like her. Osrik just seemed kinda like a puppy dog to me, following whatever Jess said haha. This next bit is spoilery, but I can’t write it anyway that isn’t spoilery, so the spoiler part is in purple text. So Mia basically killed Osrik and I didn’t get that at first until it shows that Mia planned to actually kill Jess out of revenge for her killing Letti but that just didn’t go as planned, so that was kinda alright I guess. It did kinda annoy me that after Mia finds out that it actually wasn’t Jess or Osrik that killed Letti that there wasn’t even a second thought to the fact that she killed Osrik without any reason. Yet when she came to killing an innocent and refused there was such a big deal about it. I just felt like it should have at least been mentioned.
So overall I enjoyed this but didn’t love it. I had a few issues with it and that is why I only gave it a 3 and a half star rating. I will consider reading Godsgrave, the second book, when it comes out but it’s not high on my radar.
